Politicians find agreement on new Patriot Act / Passage likely after senators, White House give and take

Charles Babington, Washington Post

Published 4:00 am, Friday, February 10, 2006

2006-02-10 04:00:00 PDT Washington -- Efforts to extend the Patriot Act cleared a major hurdle Thursday when the White House and key senators agreed to revisions that are virtually certain to secure Senate passage and likely to win House approval, congressional leaders said.

The law -- passed in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks and scheduled to lapse in key areas last year -- makes it easier for federal agents to secretly tap phones, obtain library and bank records, and search the homes of suspected terrorists. Several Democrats said the compromise announced Thursday lacks important civil liberties safeguards, and even the Republican negotiators said they had to yield to the administration on several points.

But with virtually all 55 GOP senators now on board, and numerous Democrats joining them, the plan appears to have enough support to overcome the Senate filibuster that has thwarted a four-year renewal of the statute for months. Senators said they believed the White House will be able to coax the Republican-controlled House to agree as well, even though House leaders have complained that senators' demands had weakened the measure.

"It was a bipartisan group of us that really believed we could do better ... to protect civil liberties even as we gave law enforcement important tools to conduct terrorism investigations," said Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H. He said he and his fellow negotiators had to make more concessions to the administration than they wanted to, but that Congress will monitor the law's application over the coming years and perhaps revise it.

Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, one of several Democrats who agreed to back the compromise Thursday, said that "it falls far short" of the bill passed by the Senate last year but rejected by the House. "But if you measure it against the original Patriot Act ... we've made progress" toward "protecting basic civil liberties at a time when we are dealing with the war on terrorism," Durbin said.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada called the compromise "a step in the right direction."

The proposal would restrict federal agents' access to library records, one of the Patriot Act's most contentious provisions. A form of secret subpoena known as National Security Letters could no longer be used to obtain records from libraries that function "in their traditional capacity, including providing basic Internet access," Sununu and others said in a statement. But libraries that are "Internet service providers" would remain subject to the letters, Durbin said.

The Senate proposal would no longer require National Security Letter recipients to tell the FBI the identity of their lawyers.

The compromise bill also addresses "Section 215 subpoenas," which are granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. Recipients of such subpoenas originally were forbidden to tell anyone about the action. The proposed Senate measure would allow them to challenge the "gag order" after one year, rather than the 90-day wait in earlier legislation.

Sununu said the administration insisted on the longer waiting period. "You now have a process to challenge the gag order," he said, defending the concession. "That didn't exist before."

Sununu said he and his allies were disappointed that the compromise does not require agents to "show a connection to a suspected terrorist or spy" before obtaining a Section 215 subpoena. Instead, a FISA judge would have to agree that there are reasonable grounds to believe the items being sought are relevant to an investigation into terrorism.